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Story of Ann Arbor teen who saved man outside KKK rally remembered 17 years later

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Keshia Thomas protects Albert McKeel from the crowd who chased him and kicked him on Fifth Avenue in Ann Arbor when he showed up at the KKK rally with a Confederate flag. Thomas said later: "You can't kill a man for his views. Someone has got to break the cycle."
(Ann Arbor News photo by Stephanie Lim)

The inspiring story of a black teenager who used herself as a human shield to protect a white man from an angry mob outside a Ku Klux Klan rally in Ann Arbor in 1996 is generating new buzz on the Internet this week.

Keshia Thomas, 18, of Ann Arbor, Mich., uses her body to shield a man from a crowd of anti-Klan demonstrators who were beating him with sticks after he was spotted wearing a confederate flag on his jacket during a Ku Klux Klan rally in Ann Arbor, Saturday, June 22, 1996. "Just because you beat somebody doesn't mean you're going to change his mind," Thomas said.AP Photo/Andrew Cutraro

Nearly two decades after the incident, the BBC News Magazine has retold the story in detail, explaining how Keshia Thomas, who was 18 at the time and participating in an anti-KKK counter-demonstration, interrupted the assault of a man presumed to be a white supremacist because of his Nazi tattoo and Confederate shirt.

After the man was knocked to the ground and the crowd began kicking him and beating him with wooden sticks, Thomas intervened, throwing herself on top of a man she did not know to shield him from the blows.

The BBC News spoke with Thomas, who is now in her 30s and living in Houston, Texas, for the story, which has since been picked up by other media outlets, including the New York Daily News and the Huffington Post.

She said she still tries to do something to break down racial stereotypes every day through small acts of kindness.

The BBC News story includes several photographs taken by Mark Brunner, who was a student photographer at the time and witnessed the episode.

The news outlet indicated it picked up on the story after publishing a series about kindness earlier this month and then hearing from Teri Gunderson, who lives in Oaxaca, Mexico, who said she's still touched by Thomas' courage and keeps a picture of that day to remind her to show kindness to others.

Rich Kinsey, a retired Ann Arbor police detective sergeant, recalled his experience serving as security detail during the 1996 rally in a column last year, explaining how the rally turned ugly and ended with "a rock hurled" and "blood everywhere."